7 years in the books

Hard to believe, but today is my 7 year anniversary.. it's, by far, the longest tenure I've ever had with a single company.. let me roll back the places I've worked:

• Cappies (out of college) - 2.5 years
• BPA Worldwide - 3 years
• ModemMedia - 1 year
• Hachette Filipacchi New Media - 2 years
• Phase2Media - 3 years
• DoubleClick, a/k/a Google - 7 years

So it's about double my longest tenure.. woah.

some highlights/lowlights - lowlights first, i'm one of those people who, when asked, "do you want the good news or the bad news?" will *always* reply, bad news, i like to end on a good note.

lowlights:

• being in ny for 9/11
• not that low, but being in ny for the big blackout and needing to sleep on the floor of the exec board room on a yoga mat. the bathrooms stopped working (they use electric pumps to get the water 16 floors up apparently)
• layoffs.. those always suck
• while i liked working for my manager prior to john rehl in a number of ways, there were some "weird" times there.. real weird
• all those quarterly meetings, on the 16th floor, where bruce dalziel would try and find a silver lining in some really bad quarterly earnings reports with wall street. we were cutting expenses as fast as we could, but revenues were dropping as fast.. wall street was wise to the story - a rapidly shrinking business and one they didn't understand
• all those products that were underfunded, underresourced, or just didn't make sense.. that entire marketing automation era.. protagona? that workflow company in north carolina, smartpath? site advance. we tried hard for SA, but it was destined for failure early on. easy to say now, so i'll say it anyway, what the heck were we thinking? i still remember sitting in the conf room on 16 bring told "we make marketing work better!" - did we? probably not.
• that looooong commute i used to endure in NY - 90 mins each way! 10 driving to the train station, 50-60 on the train, and then
  
• last but not least - all the sad and tragic deaths. i dont know if i had ever lost a co-worker in my entire career and my 7 years here has been a constant stream of sad and tragic deaths.. just so we dont forget all the great people: mike simanoff, james diver, steve wolkoff, jen larwa.. did i miss someone? i hope not.
  

highlights (ending on a good note)

• basketball on the 16th floor rooftop deck.. basketball on the 16th floor rooftop deck (that reminds me of "jane" in american beauty, when he says it twice (at the very end)
• all the great people i've gotten to work with
• after years of middling around, H&F really helped get us going.. and the industry came back in a big way too, of course.. but we were always built around great & reliable a serving, so when that came back into high demand, we were ready to pounce and pounce we did!
• getting to see dublin a few times.. man, i like that town (and people)
• a real working cafe in the THN office!
  

In other news..

• scrabulous is back! i tried quickly, looks a little different. i've read that the 2 guys in india who created the first game turned down like $10MM for the game - if so, stupid!
• google, heard of them? starting a venture arm? everyone does this after a while, once you have that kind of scratch and so many people looking to get bought by you, this is a good idea - just fund the ones you like.
  
• did anyone else read this? microsoft did a test by showing people "mojave" - the "new" version of windows.. it was really plain old vista.. now they are claiming we all love vista, because a few unsuspecting folks didn't know better.. does this really prove anything? i tend to doubt it.. some bloggers really take exception to it.
  
• i didnt even know AOL is trying a friendfeed like ripoff.. "buddyupdates" - now that i use gtalk and gmail to login to my AIM acct, i use AIM lots less, but am logged in, just in case. so this tool, for me, is a day late
• mets lost, argh.
• i opened and tried to install a new ink cartridge for my home printer and it blew up all over me.. you might have heard me cursing, whereever you were, colorado or beyond - i was that loud and profane. i did read up on how to get it off my hands - bleach. worked pretty well, some remnants, but much better. i think the cartridge was hot from sitting in the mailbox and had pressurized a bit.. a theory.
• the ad business is slowing, but for some reason, that affects different groups differently..
• i ad been thinking akamai was a hot company and i should look at the stock.. then they get killed! i will never learn!! well, i didnt actually buy the stock, so maybe i did learn a little? i cannot pick stocks. index funds!! well, i'm thinking about buying some sirius.. it has to be undervalued, right?! and it's SOO cheap. i'm an idiot, doing something i know i shouldnt be.
  
• blogging via scribe fire today - i really hope i like it, which i do so far. this way i can uninstall windows live writer!
• while the cheesecake factory stock is down, which sucks as i own a bunch of it (i'm long, it will come back) - they offered discounted cheesecake yesterday.. cool move. the ny cafe's had lots of cheesecake yesterday to celebrate the big day.. CO didn't share :-\
• i dont love comcast, but i dont hate them.. some truly do.. like the people who run this blog - http://www.comcastmustdie.com/
• anyone else see that bennigan's is going out of business? true! i have no appetite for that set of restaurants.. fridays, bennigans,chili's, applebee's, old chicago's, etc.. none.. ever. anyway, not sorry to see bennigan's go, sorry, it's darwinian to me.
• sunday - i need to get well by then - http://www.denverjewishsoftball.org/